Exam 2 Flashcards
Fear
The CNS’s physiological and emotional response to a serious threat to one’s well-being. Symptoms include an increase in respiration, perspiration, muscle tension, etc.
Anxiety
The CNS’s physiological and emotional response to a vague sense of a threat or danger. Symptoms include an increase in respiration, perspiration, muscle tension, etc.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
A disorder marked by persistent and excessive feelings of anxiety and worry about numerous events and activities.
Diagnosis: Excessive anxiety undermost circumstances, pervasive worry, symptoms last at least 6 months: restlessness, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, muscle tension, and/or sleep problems. Onset often in childhood/adolescence.
Client-Centered Therapy / Person-Centered Therapy
The humanistic therapy developed by Carl Rogers in which clinicians try to help clients by being accepting, empathizing accurately, and conveying genuineness.
Basic Irrational Assumptions
The inaccurate and inappropriate beliefs held by people with various psychological problems, according to Albert Ellis.
The Sociocultural Perspective for GAD
GAD is most likely to develop in people faced with truly dangerous social conditions. Higher rates in lower SES groups.
The Psychodynamic Perspective for GAD
Freud says all children experience anxiety
(realistic anxiety- faced with an actual threat,
neurotic anxiety- prevented from expressing your id impulses,
moral anxiety- when your parents punish you for expressing your id impulses.
GAD may develop if a child faces high levels of anxiety or has inadequate defense mechanisms.
Research shows that those who use more defense mechanisms (repression) and are more punished develop GAD.
Treatments: free association, therapist interpretations of transference, resistance, and dreams. Freudians focus on control of id, object-relations: help patients identify and settle early relationship problems.
The Humanistic Perspective for GAD
GAD results when people stop looking at themselves honestly and acceptingly. Carl Rogers’ explanation: lack of “unconditional positive regard” in childhood leads to “conditions of worth” (harsh self-standards). These threatening self-judgments break through and cause anxiety, setting the stage for GAD to develop.
Treatment: “client-centered” approach, but limited research support for treatment effectiveness and Rogers’ explanation of GAD/abnormal behavior.
The Cognitive Perspective for GAD
Initially, thought GAD caused by maladaptive assumptions. Albert Ellis identified basic irrational assumptions: "It's a dire necessity for an adult to be loved/approved of by virtually every significant person in his community" and "It's awful and catastrophic when things aren't the way one would very much like them to be." GAD may develop when assumptions are applied to everyday life and to more and more events. Aaron Beck: silent assumptions of imminent danger. Newer theories: Metacognitive theory (Wells) - the most problematic assumptions in GAD are the individual's worry about worrying (meta-worry); Intolerance of Uncertainty theory - certain individuals consider it unacceptable that negative events may occur, even if there's a very small chance, worry is an effort to find "correct" solutions; Avoidance theory (Borkovec) - worrying serves a "positive" funciton for those with GAD by reducing unusually high levels of bodily arousal. They worry repeatedly to avoid/reduce uncomfortable states of bodily arousal.
Therapies for GAD from Cog. Pers.
Ellis’s rational-emotive therapy (RET) - point out irrational assumptions, suggest more appropriate assumptions, assign related homework (goal is to do something you think you can’t do), studies suggest at least modest relief from treatment.
Educate clients about the role of worrying in GAD and their bodily arousal and cognitive responses, clients become better at identifying their worry and attempts to control things by worrying. With practice, clients are expected to see the world as less threatening, adopt more constructive ways of coping, worry less.
Family Pedigree Study
A research design in which investigators determine how many and which relatives of a person with a disorder have the same disorder.
Benzodiazepines
The most common group of antianxiety drugs (like xanax and valium). Provides temporary relief, rebound anxiety if you stop taking it, and physical dependency.
Binds to GABA receptors to increase the ability of GABA to bind to hem as well to decrease anxiety.
Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy
Therapists help clients become aware of their streams of thoughts, including their worries, as they are occurring and to accept such thoughts as mere events of the mind. Mindfulness involves being in the present moment, intentionally and nonjudgementally.
The Biological Perspective for GAD
Believe that GAD is caused chiefly by biological factors. Issue of causal relationship between anxiety and physiological responses. Supported by family pedigree studies. The closer the relative, the greater the likelihood. In normal fear rxns, key neurons fire more rapidly, creating a general state of excitability experienced as fear/anxiety. A feedback system is triggered and brain and body activities work together to reduce excitability like releasing GABA to inhibit neuron firing, thereby reducing experience of fear/anxiety. Malfunctioning in the feedback system is believed to cause GAD, maybe because too little or ineffective receptors.
The brain circuit that helps produce anxiety rxns, are the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex, and the anterior cingulate cortex.
GABA
An inhibitory NT whose low activity has been linked to GAD.
Sedative-Hypnotic Drugs
Drugs that calm people at lower doses and help them fall asleep at higher doses.
Relaxation Training
A treatment procedure that teaches clients to relax at will so that they can calm themselves in stressful situations. Physical relaxation leads to psychological relaxation.
Biofeedback
A technique in which a client is given info about their physiological reactions as they occur and learns to control the reactions voluntarily. Modest effort, greatest impact when combined with other methods.
Electromyograph (EMG)
A device that provides feedback about the level of muscular tension in the body.
Phobia
A persistent and unreasonable fear of a particular object, activity, or situation. May develop into GAD when a person acquires a large number of phobias.
Specific Phobia
A severe and persistent fear of a specific object or situation.
Agoraphobia
A fear of venturing into public places or situations where escape might be difficult or help, unavailable, should they experience panic of become incapacitated. Typically develops in 20s-30s. Pervasive and complex and people also get panic disorder with this (comorbid).
The Behavioral Perspective for Phobias
Believe that people with phobias first learn to fear certain objects, situations, or events through conditioning, such as classical conditioning and modeling. Some specific phobias are much more common than others due to evolutionary factors. Behaviorists believe that after acquiring a fear response, people try to avoid what they fear. They don’t get close to the dreaded objects enough to learn that the objects are really quite harmless.
Stimulus Generalization
A phenomenon in which responses to one stimulus are also produced by similar stimuli.
Preparedness
A predisposition to develop certain fears. Transmitted genetically through an evolutionary process.
Exposure Treatment
Behavioral treatments in which persons are exposed to objects or situations they dread.
Systematic Desensitization
A behavioral treatment that uses relaxation training and a fear hierarchy to help clients with phobias react calmly to the objects or situations they dread.
Flooding
A treatment for phobias in which clients are exposed repeatedly and intensively to a feared object and made to see that it’s actually harmless.
Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD)
A severe and persistent fear of social and performance situations in which embarrassment may occur. May be broad or narrow. People self-rate lower than actual performance.
Treatments for SAD
Antidepressant medications, exposure therapy, group therapy, and cognitive therapies.
Two components must be addressed: overwhelming social fear addressed and lack of social skills.
Social Skills Training
A therapy approach that helps people learn or improve social skills and assertiveness through role-playing and rehearsing of desirable behaviors.
Panic Attacks
Periodic, short bouts of panic that occur suddenly, reach a peak within minutes and gradually passes. Might include heart palpitations, shortness of breath, sweating, hot and cold flashes, trembling, chest pains, choking sensations, faintness, dizziness, and a feeling of unreality. Happens in the absence of a real threat.
Panic Disorder
An anxiety disorder marked by recurrent and unpredictable panic attacks.
The Biological Perspective for Panic Disorder
Panic disorder might be caused by abnormal norepinephrine activity in locus coeruleus. Also, produced by a brain circuit consisting of the amygdala, hippocampus, ventromedial nucleus of the hypothalamus, central gray matter, and locus coeruleus. Some ppl may inherit a predisposition to these abnormalities.
Norepinephrine
A NT responsible for arousal and alertness that is linked to panic disorder and depression.
Locus Coeruleus
A small area of the brain that seems to be active in the regulation of emotions. Many of its neurons use norepinephrine.
Amygdala
A small, almond-shaped brain structure that processes emotional info.
Treatments for Panic Disorder
Antidepressants, xanax and other powerful benzodiazepines, and cognitive therapies. Educate, teach clients to apply more accurate interpretations and teach client skills for coping with anxiety.
The Cognitive Perspective for Panic Disorder
In their view, full panic reactions are experienced only by people who further misinterpret the physiological events that are taking place within their bodies. They believe that panic-prone people may be very sensitive to certain bodily sensations; when they unexpectedly experience such sensations, they misinterpret them as signs of a medical catastrophe.
Biological Challenge Test
A procedure used to produce panic in participants or clients by having them exercise vigorously or perform since other potentially panic-inducing task in the presence of a researcher or therapist.
Anxiety Sensitivity
A tendency to focus on one’s bodily sensations, assess them illogically, and interpret them as harmful. Panic -prone people generally have a higher degree of anxiety sensitivity.
Obsession
A persistent thought, idea, impulses, or image that is experienced repeatedly, feels intrusive, and causes anxiety.
Obsessive wishes, impulses, images, ideas, or doubts.
Compulsion
A repetitive and rigid behavior or mental act that a person feels driven to perform in order to prevent or reduce anxiety. “Voluntary,” but feels mandatory.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
A disorder in which a person has recurrent and unwanted thoughts, a need to perform repetitive and rigid actions, or both.
The Psychodynamic Perspective for OCD
In their view, the battle between anxiety-provoking id impulses and anxiety-reducing defense mechanisms isn’t buried in the unconscious but is played out in overt thoughts and actions. The id impulses usually take the form of obsessions and the ego defenses appear as compulsive actions or counterthoughts.
Isolation
An ego defense mechanism in which people unconsciously isolate and disown undesirable and unwanted thoughts, experiencing them as foreign intrusions.
Undoing
An ego defense mechanism whereby a person unconsciously cancels out an unacceptable desire or act by performing another act.
Reaction Formation
An ego defense mechanism whereby a person suppresses an unacceptable desire by taking on a lifestyle that expresses the opposite desire.
Exposure and Response/Ritual Prevention
A behavioral treatment for OCD that exposes a client to anxiety-arousing thoughts or situations and then prevents the client from performing his/her compulsive acts. Therapists often model the behavior before the client.
The Behavioral Perspective for OCD
Behaviorists have concentrated on explaining and treating compulsions rather than obsessions. Compulsions appears to be rewarded by a reduction in anxiety. In fearful situations, they happen to perform a particular act. When the threat lifts, they associate the improvement with the random act. After repeated associations, they believe the compulsion is changing the situation (bringing them luck).
The Cognitive Perspective for OCD
They point out that everyone has repetitive, unwanted, and intrusive thoughts. Anyone might have thoughts of harming others or being contaminated by germs, but most people dismiss or ignore them with ease. Those with OCD typically blame themselves for such thoughts and expect that somehow terrible things will happen, bc people with OCD tend to be more depressed, have very high standards of conduct and morality, believe thoughts are equal to actions (can bring harm).
Therapy: Focus on cognitive processes that help to produce and maintain obsessive thoughts and compulsions.
Neutralizing
A person’s attempt to eliminate unwanted thoughts by thinking for behaving in ways that puts matters right internally, making up for the unacceptable thoughts. Does this by seeking reassurance, think “good” thoughts, washing, and checking. Becomes reinforced by a reduction in anxiety. Leads to obsessions or compulsions if used too much.
The Biological Perspective for OCD
OCD is linked in part to biological factors, like heritability. Also, abnormally low activity of serotonin and abnormal functioning in key regions of the brain. Use serotonin-based antidepressants for therapy.
Serotonin
A NT whose abnormal activity is linked to depression, OCD, and eating disorders.
Orbitofrontal Cortex
A region of the brain in which impulses involving excretion, sexuality, violence, and other primitive activities normally arise. Abnormal functioning linked to OCD.
Caudate Nuceli
Brain structures, within the basal ganglia, that help convert sensory info into thoughts and actions. Abnormal functioning linked to OCD.
Obsessive-Compulsive-Related Disorders
Disorders in which obsessive-like concerns drive people to repeatedly and excessively perform certain behaviors that disrupt their lives.
Hoarding disorder, trichotillomania (hair-pulling disorder), excortiation disorder (skin-picking disorder), and body dysmorphic disorder (belief that a person has certain body defects/flaws).
Stress-Management Program
An approach to treating GAD and other anxiety disorders that teaches clients techniques for reducing and controlling stress.
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Combination is often more effective than either intervention alone. Psychoeducation + exposure and response prevention exercises for people with OCD.
Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)
The network of nerve fibers that connect the CNS to all other organs of the body. Helps control the involuntary movements like breathing.
Endocrine System
The system of the glands located throughout the body that helps control important activities such as growth and sexual activity.
Sympathetic Nervous System
The nerve fibers of the ANS that quicken the heartbeat and produce other changes experienced as arousal and fear. May directly activate organs or indirectly by stimulating the adrenal medulla (which releases epinephrine and NE) and that activates organs to produce fear.
Parasympathetic Nervous System
The nerve fibers of the ANS that help return bodily processes to normal after being aroused.
